XIV
At St. Crispin’s
The refuge in Crispin’s Street was founded sixty years ago by one John Gilbert, D.D. It is supported entirely by voluntary contributions, and the work of administration and general management is performed by nuns of the Convent of Mercy. The refuge opens on the first of November and closes on the first of May. At five o’clock each night in these winter months the doors are opened, and the long waiting queue of homeless women let in.
Each applicant is asked her name and nothing else. The sole qualification necessary is her need; nor do the women come alone. The majority of them bring their children, small infants, little toddlers and young boys and girls. There is nothing formal or official in the great, big dining-room. Long trestle tables ran down each side, there is a fireplace at each end from which a cheery blaze leaps out infinitely heartening of a bleak night. One hundred and twelve women are admitted. Beyond that number accommodation cannot go.
There is a steady competition for the privilege of staying at the refuge, and for this reason its whereabouts is not generally discussed in the underworld. Those who know, not unnaturally want to keep the knowledge to themselves, for once you are in the refuge you may rely on fairly consecutive accommodation through the worst months of the year.
When the quota of women is complete the outer doors are shut. A bell rings and everyone troops down to the lavatories and bathrooms. Here is ample accommodation for washing and bathing, with a copper for the boiling of soiled clothes. Clean towels are provided and good soap, and the women revel in the opportunity of cleansing their bodies from the dirt and grime inseparable from their life. There is a foot-bath which runs the length of the wall, and pails, one for each woman, filled with hot water, for those who do not desire total immersion. They wash, not only themselves, but their children and their clothes, which dry speedily before a roaring fire. Some of these poor women have literally no underwear, being garbed only in those rags which form a kind of outer garment. These are provided with chemises and petticoats with a kindly sympathy as healing as the fresh linen.
Ablutions finished, the hundred and twelve, with their attendant children, troop up again to the dining-room, where they have a comfortable meal of cocoa and fresh rolls. Some of the women bring in with them a little butter or jam, which they are allowed to spread upon the bread.
“I always feel I should like to give dripping—butter’s quite impossible at the price,” said one of the Sisters, “but it’s not only the cost of the dripping, it would mean that we should have to provide somebody special to spread it. We haven’t a moment to spare as it is.” On Sunday morning, however, butter is served with the coffee and rolls which every inmate has for breakfast.
The evening meal over, the women sit and talk. Somebody plays the piano—it is an excellent instrument—or sings, or recites, and on occasion the company is moved to dance—middle-aged mothers with big families, elderly grandames and girls in their teens.
There is an atmosphere of cheerfulness, but those who wish can pour out their sorrows, or discuss their prospects with the Sister-in-Charge.
Each inmate is entitled to spend five nights in the refuge, going out during the day to look for work, or follow her own devices. The children, however, stay indoors and go to the school attached to the Convent. Before the expiry of the fifth day enquiries are made as to whether the woman can give any reference. The name of a former employer, however casual, is sufficient, and if this is forthcoming, the length of her stay is increased to another eight days. If, during that time, she is able to get ever so little work, she gets a further invitation for sixteen days, and then goes back to five and so on.
This system works out to the benefit of what we may describe as a small corporation of families, who otherwise would pass the winter in a state of utter wretchedness, if not exposure. There are, of course, a certain number of casual women who depart after their five nights; some of them do not even stay the whole length of that period. The Sisters are able to find employment for a fair percentage. The newspapers are available each morning and applications are received at the refuge for domestic servants and charwomen. Girls who desire to take up domestic service have a period of training in the convent, and every effort is made to keep in touch with as many refugees as possible.
The dormitory is a huge room with a series of bunks ranged side by side. One hundred and twelve bunks, each one lined with leather for the sake of cleanliness and covered with American cloth; a flock pillow, also covered; and a counterpane of quilted leather. Huge fires burn in the dormitory, and the case and comfort of the warmth takes the stiffness from the limbs, relaxes the overstrained muscles and softens the skin.
The women sleep very placidly and awake really refreshed. Breakfast is served in the dining-room, after which the inmates disperse for the day. The Sister in Charge of the refuge, like most other thoughtful and observant women who help the poor, is of the opinion that destitution has enormously increased since the war owing to the housing famine. It often happens that a woman will come to her in infinite distress, and explain that, like her husband, she is out at work, and that at the end of the day they have returned to find their bits of furniture put on to the landing and the door of their room locked. Another tenant has been found at a higher rent, and the landlord has simply and forcibly ejected them, flinging father, mother and children into the street.
It is very easy to point out that such cases can appeal to the law, but while the law is being put in motion, the furniture disintegrates or disappears, or, maybe, has to be sold to defray expenses, so that in the ultimate the law does not help at all. If it were possible to pass an act which should bring such a proceeding within the immediate jurisdiction of the police court, so that an officer could straightway go to the landlord and bring him up before the magistrate, something might be done; meanwhile rents go up and up, rooms are more difficult to get, and the landlord of the house seizes every opportunity of increasing his income. In Spitalfields a family thus dispossessed can go to the shelter, the husband is given house room in the men’s quarters, and the wife and children are looked after with the rest. Some few cases there are, the sister admitted, where destitution has been induced by drink. Such cases are always advanced in life; young and middle-aged women cannot and do not drink, as I have myself observed.
It will be seen that for the most part the hospitality of the Crispin Shelter is enjoyed by a selective group, and this, not through any exercise of favouritism, but because the old habitués line up early and get in first.
During the winter evenings, entertainments are organised at the shelter; professional singers, pianists and actors come down and give turns. Indeed, the whole atmosphere is stimulative, and the homeless look forward to the social, quite as much as to the material, benefits provided. On Sunday also, a dinner of hot soup is provided, to which all who so desire may come. They gather in from the street to enjoy the welcome fare. It is good soup, hot, strong, and clean, and it is prepared in large boilers, from which great ladles pour the liquid into huge tureens. No one is turned hungry away. There is a full attendance, but, like the kindly deeds for which this refuge is noted, the fame is not blazoned abroad. The destitute have their own secrets, and as I have said, they may quite possibly preserve a discreet silence, lest they should be crowded out. Refuges run on these lines near the centre of London, and in the outlying suburbs, would do very much to solve the problem of the destitute woman unable to pay for her bed. The working expenses of St. Crispin, as will be seen, are not excessive, and if a registry of employment were kept at each establishment, a certain proportion would emerge from the ranks of the outcast into self-support. Thousands of pounds every year are subscribed for the erection of hostels, where business women and girls engaged in offices may live in decent surroundings, at a figure considerably below the average rate demanded by a boarding house.
I am very glad to feel that business women and girls have these advantages, but it is not for them I am concerned. It is for those others, who, save for the helping hand extended by the Crispin Refuge and one or two similar places, have no hope of a bed unless they can collect the necessary pence.
I have mentioned that those women who wish to spend more than five days are asked to produce some kind of a recommendation. Many of these are very rudimentary. In one case a woman who had been turned out of her room, to make way for a more profitable tenant, asked to be allowed to stay for another week. She was in work and proudly produced a letter from her employer, which ran as follows: “Mary Brown has worked for us for a year, and we ain’t missed nothing yet.” The employee exhibited this testimonial with glowing rapture, for it would seem, in this quarter of London at any rate, dishonesty is the unforgivable crime. This particular inmate stayed on the whole of the season, for no objection is made to the inmates getting paid employment, and in no case is a charge made.
“It helps them to get boots and a few clothes,” said the sister; “if not for themselves for the children. And they want to collect all they can in the winter, or they may have nowhere to go when we close down.”
All sorts and conditions of women go to Crispin Street. I have already spoken of the “rover” type, but this does not exhaust the unexpected.
“We’ve had B.A.’s here,” said the Sister; “women who have taken the highest degrees in science. We’ve also had women doctors and a distinguished artist.”
There wasn’t anything specific to account for their declension in the social scale; none of them seemed to have been in prison, and there was no doubt as to their brains. Probably some shock, a big emotional strain, had broken them. They none of them attempted to get back to their professions, and when suggestions were made that they might be found work, they disappeared. They are distinctly not rovers, for they have no initiative. Something in their nervous or emotional machinery seems to have broken, and they have lost the desire to have it put right.
Most of the women who claim refuge in the shelter are British, the percentage of foreigners is very small, and there are but few Jewesses. There is no distinction as to sect. If a woman be hungry and without a home, to take her in, as the little Sister said, is but a Christian act:—“It is not our business what religion she professes.”
I have already pointed out that one of the stock arguments against running lodging houses for women, on a charitable or commercial basis, is that they are difficult to manage. And here it is important to note that the nuns who run this shelter are not of this opinion. Mostly, the refugees are very tractable, and observe the simple rules which hospitality requires, without the slightest difficulty. Sometimes there is a battle of words between the occupants of neighbouring bunks in the early hours of the morning, but the entry of a sister—there is always a nun within call—with a patient and courteous request to know the rights and wrongs of the dispute, soon restores peace. Moreover, and this is a point I would urge on the Metropolitan Asylum Board for due consideration, the door of the dormitory remains unlocked, and its occupants are free, if they so wish, to walk about in the cold. Strange to say, they do not seem to desire this peculiar form of recreation, and unless one of them be ill, they all stay in the bunks till the morning bell rings.
The women are not called upon to work for their board and lodging. The house is kept clean and orderly by a small staff engaged for the purpose. It would be no part of Christian courtesy to set five women to scrub the same table or to repolish door handles already burnished, while the degrading task of picking oakum is quite outside the Crispin scheme of things. It is true that the same women return again and again, unlike the postulants for the casual ward; but in one case the aim is to keep the destitute alive, in the other the required object is quite obviously to force them to die, or, at any rate, so to intimidate them that they do not come back.
From the economic point of view, however, as distinct from the human, it would cost the State less to contribute to a shelter run on the lines suggested, than to upkeep the casual ward. For so dire is the discipline by law exacted that it is but rarely that the women’s quarters are full. I have been told by several casuals that the diet served in prison is infinitely better than the food provided in the workhouse, and that, take it for all in all, a term in Holloway is far to be preferred to a sojourn in Southwark, where, outside the personal kindliness of certain officials, nobody cares whether you live or die.